Posts [ 20 ]

We are going to learn how to use the "Pose to Pose Animation Technique" in Blender to animate our characters. I am including 7 different reference pose images we will use to accomplish 6 different types of Walk Cycle's and 1 Run cycle.

After the tutorial you should be able to use this technique, to edit your 7 existing poses and create new variations and find other "Pose Sequence's" to accomplish other types of animation.

Basic Walk Cycle

Happy Walk

Sneaky Walk

Double Bounce Walk

Angry Walk

Proud Man Walk

Basic Run Cycle

This method of animating from one pose to the next, hence the term 'pose to pose' animation, allows the animator to map out the action in advance. It is a particularly useful animation method when a character must perform certain tasks within a predetermined time or where a series of actions must synchronize accurately with a recorded sound track. The technique helps ensure that characters arrive at a particular place on screen at a precise point in time.

The ‘key pose’ technique is still the most widely used method of animating. Sequences can be tested and individual poses can be re-worked and the animation progressively improved. The timeline is continually revised to provide an accurate record of how the animation is to be photographed or rendered. This production method also provides a logical way of breaking down work so that it can be handed on to other people in the production chain.

How its done in Blender

The idea is to open one of these "Pose Sequence's" up as a "Background" in Blender, Then you would create a "Rig" and in "Pose Mode" "Select our position in the Timeline", place our rig over the "First Pose in the Sequence" and "Move the Bones into position", once that is done you then hit the A key to select all the Bones then the "I" Key and "Select LocRotScale" from the menu. We would do this for each pose in the Pose Sequence Sheet, Advancing our Timeline slider position as we go.

Once Completed you should have your Animation.

When you are happy with your Animated Rig you can then in "Pose Mode | Position the Timeline Slider" over each Keyframe and "Clear" its X,Y,Z Location to 0,0,0 and hit the A key to select all the Bones and then hit the I Key and choose "LocRotScale" to adjust the current keyframe. We do this to have our Rig perform its "Animation in Place" ie "Walk in Place".

Note: I always!!! Select all my bones first(A key in Pose Mode) before inserting or modifying a keyframe(I Key in Pose Mode) this insures that all the bones positions are saved. You would do this every time you insert or modify a keyframe.

You, sir, area a genius! Don't you know that I have been trying to learn this for the last 3-5 days, and never got it so simple and straightforward! THANKS! Now to start crankin' out those bvh files! haha.

You, sir, area a genius! Don't you know that I have been trying to learn this for the last 3-5 days, and never got it so simple and straightforward! THANKS! Now to start crankin' out those bvh files! haha.

Question is, is one chooses maratis, how does one get from one animation to another. Engines, such as one you have named here zester and for which you use as you noted, HOrde3d in this case, specificially have code built in for 'blending animations'. I'm not a professional coder, obviously, but from horde3d :

" ◾Layered animation blending and mixing using masks and additive channels " , which doesn't to me sound like 'faking' it to achieve similar results.

Im curious too, where are you going with this example , as atm it just looks like you sharing your new animations That would be awesome on its own of course I never took time to learn makehuman, don't have poser or had time to invest in learning animation techniques , so hints on how to achieve such things are always helpful ;)hah

Trouble is, while that's all fine and good for blender, that doesn't mean it can replace:

" ◾Layered animation blending and mixing using masks and additive channels ' does it ?

IF so, that's fine by me, but I think we need some clarification on this, as to how it relates to maratis, and what visuals as a result will be degraded by not having the features as noted here above, in maratis atm.

I just found out that you can do animation blending in Blender. Then it is just a matter of setting the animation points to the correct frames. Keep Going Zester. hehe

I am not sure if or how "Animation Blending" from Blender to Maratis would be done. But the old school way is to have a "Transitional Animation" that would play before a "Primary Animation", but regardless Ps2, Xbox, Gamecube games didn't use "Animation Blending" or "Morph targets" those are advanced features normally found in Highend Graphics/Game Engines. (PS3, PS4, Xbox360, Xbox?) there might be some game engines for the Wii that supports those.

Isn't animation blending just combining two different animations? So animation 1 makes the character walk and animation 2 makes it attack with a sword, and one doesn't interfere with the other in the process.Maratis doesn't currenlty support it though.

Isn't animation blending just combining two different animations? So animation 1 makes the character walk and animation 2 makes it attack with a sword, and one doesn't interfere with the other in the process.Maratis doesn't currenlty support it though.

I looked at a couple of lynda.com tutorials a while ago (the free ones on youtube), and I just about have this animation down good enough to get some good stuff into Maratis. A few more things to do first (creating my own cartoony character and wardrobe) and I might have Ratchet & Clank up and running. haha.

Haven't been able to do the game mechanics part of the game for all of the technical issues. We will see.

nice tutorial zester keep going btw is it just me or the angry walk looks like he is dancing ?

Yah the "Angry Walk" looks funny to me also now that I look at it.

The "Happy Walk" reminds me of one of Cinderellas step sisters (Drizella Tremaine) when she is getting ready for the ball and does the marches angerly down the hall to complain to her mother that she has nothing to wear..

anael wrote:

I encourage you to read Richard Williams book "The Animator's Survival Kit",or the DVDs (more expensive).